9/11 Questions - What About bin Laden?

This Man Appears to be Getting Younger

DOHA, Qatar (CNN) -- Islamic militant leader Osama bin Laden, the man the United States considers the prime suspect in last week's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, denied any role Sunday in the actions believed to have killed thousands. In a statement issued to the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, bin Laden said, "The U.S. government has consistently blamed me for being behind every occasion its enemies attack it. I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons," bin Laden's statement said. "I have been living in the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan and following its leaders' rules. The current leader does not allow me to exercise such operations," bin Laden said.

Asked if he believed bin Laden's denial, President Bush said, "No question he is the prime suspect. No question about that." Since Tuesday's terrorist attacks against the United States, Bush has repeatedly threatened to strike out against terrorism and any nation that supports or harbors its disciples.

Bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi-born exile, lived in Afghanistan for several years. U.S. officials blame him for earlier strikes on U.S. targets, including last year's attack on the USS Cole in Yemen and the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. Bin Laden's campaign stems from the 1990 decision by Saudi Arabia to allow U.S. troops into the kingdom after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait -- a military presence that has become permanent.

In a 1997 CNN interview, bin Laden called the U.S. military presence an "occupation of the land of the holy places." Immediately after the attacks that demolished the World Trade Center's landmark twin towers and seriously damaged the Pentagon, officials of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban said they doubted bin Laden could have been involved in carrying out the actions. The Taliban -- the fundamentalist Islamic militia that seized power in Afghanistan in 1996 -- denied his ties to terrorism and said they have taken away all his means of communication with the outside world.

Now we have a problem. Osama bin Laden and George Bush are telling different stories? Whom do we believe? bin Laden was on the United States' Most Wanted List after the 1993 World Trade Center bombings and certainly should have been the target of Bush's efforts to kill or capture him, but Bush's actions raise significant questions. This video shows him lying about seeing the first plane hit the tower (or was he lying?); stumbling badly when confronted with the question as to whether or not he knew in advance of the attacks; and attacking those who offer conspiracy theories.



Immediately after the attacks Bush said he wanted bin Laden "DEAD OR ALIVE". Here he is just SIX MONTHS after 9/11. In response to a reporters question, President Bush tells the world that he is "truly not that concerned" with catching the man who murdered 3,000 Americans just six months and two days earlier because "we've marginalized him."

Please note that he ALMOST says "I don't know where he is, nor do I... (really care)." but catches himself in mid-sentence. "He hides in caves while sending young people off to die."

It's truly amazing that a man that supposedly had bombed the World Trade Center not ONCE, but TWICE doesn't concern Mr. Macho, George Bush. Amazing! Why?

In our opinion, Bush was not concerned about bin Laden, 1) because he knew bin Laden was not the mastermind of 9/11; and, 2) because he knew that bin Laden had been near death just several weeks before. How did Bush know this?

A conservative French newspaper, La Figaro, reported that the CIA station chief in Dubai had met with Osama Bin Laden just weeks before the 9-11 attacks while Osama was being treated at a U.S. Army hospital in Dubai for kidney failure. Yet, even though Osama was on the CIA most wanted list, the CIA station chief did not only NOT arrest him, but met with him, then went back to the U.S. for high level meetings in Washington. This newspaper is well established and respected throughout Europe. It is not a tabloid.

These facts have never been addressed by our government. Why did the CIA meet with bin Laden just weeks before the attack and not arrest him? And, while we are discussing bin Laden, what about the connections that many have intimated between the Bush family and the bin Laden family and are they important?

Osama bin Laden's older brother Salem, once head of the wealthy Saudi family clan, was a former business associate of U.S. President George W. Bush. Salem bin Laden, one of 57 children their father Mohammed sired with his 12 wives, and Bush were founders of the Arbusto Energy oil company in Texas. He died in a plane crash in 1988, but not before the Arbusto Energy Oil Company, founded in 1978, had become hugely successful.

The bin Laden brothers inherited a fortune from their construction magnate father. He left millions to each of his many, many children after dying in an air crash in 1968. Salem put a large part of his money into business ventures, including Arbusto Energy. At the time, Bush was not long out of Harvard Business School. As he built his business empire, Salem Bin Laden had an intriguing relationship with the president-to-be. In 1978, he appointed James Bath, a close friend of Bush who “served” with him in the Air National Guard, as his representative in Houston, Texas. It was in that year that Bath invested $70,000 in Bush's company, Arbusto. It was never revealed whether he was investing his own money or Salem's. The same year, Bath bought Houston Gulf Airport on behalf of the Saudi Arabian multi-millionaire.

Salem was the head of the bin Laden family as the oldest of all the brothers and sisters, and a man with a powerful presence. The FBI in Boston had long been aware of bin Laden's extended family and began monitoring their activities after the 1998 terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.

So, to this point we have demonstrated that our government was incorrect in identifying the 19 hijackers and has done nothing to date to admit that at least some of those men had nothing to do with the attacks. We have also learned, probably for the first time, that Osama bin Laden adamantly denied any involvement in the attacks, and that he met with a CIA operatives at an American hospital in Dubai just weeks before the attacks. We have also demonstrated that the Bush and bin Laden families have had a long history of business dealings in oil. This is disturbing, but does not prove anything. Falsifying evidence to place the blame on bin Laden DOES prove something.

Was Osama Bin Laden responsible for 9/11?

The Bush Administration says yes, citing a grainy, badly-edited videotape that surfaced in December, 2001. In that tape, a fat guy who vaguely resembles Bin Laden chortles about the success of the 9/11 attacks. (In earlier interviews, Bin Laden had denied responsibility for 9/11, once even deploring the loss of civilian life in the attacks and calling them un-Islamic.)  Is the famous "confession video" genuine? Despite Bush's insistence that the tape is authentic, America's top academic Bin Laden expert has finally gone on the record, joining numerous other experts.



"It's bogus," says Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University's Religious Studies program. Lawrence, author of "Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden", offered his historic debunking of the administration's lie in an interview with Kevin Barrett ("Dynamic Duo," gcnlive.com, 2/16/2007, first hour). The interview marked Lawrence's first major public statement since he made headlines last year by suggesting that recent Osama tapes are hoaxes and that the real Osama Bin Laden may be dead.

Why has Bush been lying for more than seven years by telling us that this preposterously bad hoax is a genuine "confession video"? Lawrence, citing informants in the US intelligence apparatus's Bin Laden units, said that everyone knows the tape is fake, adding that the hoax has been kept alive because it is politically useful to those who wish to deflect attention from "conspiracy theories" about 9/11.

If Professor Lawrence is right—and anyone with eyes can see that he is, simply by comparing the overweight impostor in the Fatty Bin Laden bogus confession video to other pictures of Osama Bin Laden—the Bush Administration, by repeatedly citing the tape as authentic, is clearly guilty of obstruction of justice at best, high treason and conspiracy to mass murder at worst. Since the FBI now tells us that Osama Bin Laden is "not wanted for 9/11" because there is "no hard evidence" connecting him to the 9/11 attacks, and since US intelligence personnel all know the "confession tape" is a Bush Administration hoax, it should not be difficult to nail the perpetrators of this outrageous cover-up of the crime of the century.

Where did this tape come from? Who was responsible for the administration's claim that it is authentic despite widespread knowledge in relevant intelligence agencies that it is bogus? If Bruce Lawrence is correct in asserting that US intelligence personnel know the tape is fake, we need to put them, along with Bush and Cheney, under oath and find out why our government has been lying so outrageously for more than seven years in order to obstruct justice by shielding the real perpetrators of 9/11.

The web of deceit continues . . .














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